"Brady goes down and they pull a Q.B. out of their pocket the likes of which Buff has not seen since Kelly."
Sorry, but I'm not about to anoint Matt Cassel as the next Jim Kelly or [insert HOF QB here]. He's had back-to-back big games against the 26th and 28th ranked passing defenses in the league. 400+ yard, high-scoring shootouts where the clock was stopping on almost every play. And he had a nice game against Denver too, they're ranked 25th. Against the Bills he was efficient and ran for a TD, fumbled once and was only sacked once.
But look at the season before that:
Against Indy (not exactly the best defense in the league), NE scored a measly 15 points and Cassel didn't throw a TD and got picked off. Against St. Louis, a horrible team, Cassel got picked off twice and sacked 3 times. Against San Diego, NE scored 10 points, Cassel didn't throw a TD, and he got picked off once and sacked 4 times. San Francisco - 1 TD, 2 INTs, sacked 5 times. The first Miami game - NE was drubbed 38-13, Cassel fumbled, was picked off, was sacked 4 times and his YPA was an astonishingly low 4.2. Against the Jets in Week 2, Cassel played a relatively clean game going 16/23 for 165 yards, 0 TDs, 0 INTs, but 4 sacks. And in Week 1 coming in for Brady he did well, throwing a TD on 13/18 passing for 152 yards. They beat the Chiefs.
Pittsburgh is coming to NE this week. Look at those teams I went through again. Cassel has not faced any defense even close to theirs. Pittsburgh is allowing only 3.8 yards per PLAY. They are giving up only about two touchdowns per game (14.5) - or how about 5 FGs. They allow less than 240 total yards per game. They have linebackers with double-digit sacks already. They have a saftey with 5 interceptions.
If you want to see Cassel come back to earth this week - watch the game Sunday at 4:15.